We’re finishing up disaster movie month and I thought it only fitting that we go out with a bang. Thus, we’re taking a look at the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon.Unlike some of the previous films in this series, I was actually pretty old when this movie came out. There are a number of things that I personally remember about that summer, not the least of which was the unending debate over whether one would be seeing Armageddon, or Deep Impact. They both had basically the same premise, they just approached that premise from vastly different angles. Nevertheless, I remember my science teacher proclaiming that seeing Deep Impact would result in bonus points towards final grades, while seeing Armageddon would result in penalties. It was a pretty heated ordeal and before the Internet was running the same scope of interference that it does today. We’re not going to compare and contrast today because that’s been done to death, and I’m more of a competent story guy anyway. This has left me in quite the quagmire as I couldn’t really think of a fresh way to review this movie. I could go on about all of the scientific inaccuracies, or how said inaccuracies are so abundant that actual college astrophysics courses exist that focus just on examining them. However, that too has been done way too many times. Hence, I struggle with how to do this, but we’ll soldier on because I care about the brief moments of entertainment that my articles bring to your life each week.
Luckily, we have the formula to fall back on. If you aren’t familiar with it, take a look at my review of Towering Inferno. You’ll get the play by play there. I can confidently say that this movie checks off every item on the disaster movie formula list. There’s the huge ensemble cast, there’s the over the top situation and special effects, there’s the love story, and there’s even the pop song written specifically for the film. If you were alive in 1998, then you know that you couldn’t blink without running into Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing. It was all over the radio, and all over the music channels since those things actually still played music back then. So there’s no debate that this movie fits squarely in the genre in question. The question is, does it do its thing well?
Taking a critical look at this movie, as I am wont to do, I can say overall that it does what it does pretty well. The story remains coherent throughout, despite sometimes making zero sense, the characters are about as well developed as one can expect from a Michael Bay movie, and the visuals, much like Independence Day, are pretty spectacular. Thus, I don’t even want to focus too much on that aspect. There’s something that I find far more interesting that I’d like to look at, and that’s the Michael Bay formula. You have to remember that this movie was only Bay’s second major film He had done Bad Boys previously, which was a pretty successful film. It was also a straightforward action movie. This is the first time that Bay tried his hand at something approaching Sci-fi. That makes this movie particularly interesting to me on a larger scale because Michael Bay has done so much Sci-fi/Fantasy since that it’s pretty hard to dissociate him from the genre. That all began here, and just like his SF/F career began here, a lot of the gimmicks that he’s employed over the years that have turned him into a walking punchline also began here, we just hadn’t gotten enough exposure to care. So let’s have some fun and do a good old fashioned roast!
As I said before, on a general level, the movie works well. The plot is fairly coherent, the pacing is quick, which adds to the feeling of apprehension the viewer might experience as the movie marches toward the potential extinction of the all the life on Earth, and the visuals are pretty spectacular, although Bay has never really had a problem setting up amazing visuals. We all know Michael Bay, and we’re all familiar enough with his work to know that there are a few elements out of place there. First, Bay isn’t known for his plots working terribly well, and second, his characters are never very well developed where they were a little more so here. My theory as to why this happened is that Jerry Bruckheimer attached to the project as a producer. Bruckheimer has a pretty good track record for making good quality films. My theory is that most of those areas where Bay lacks, Bruckheimer swooped in to pick up the slack so that he wouldn’t tarnish his reputation. That’s kind of important because it shows that Bay had an opportunity to learn from a seasoned filmmaker. This could have been a transformative event in his life (pun intended), but it would seem that he got very little out of it. To the contrary, there are numerous anecdotal stories of members of the cast bringing up concerns and Bay essentially telling them to piss off. When pressed about all of the inaccuracies with the film’s science, Bay simply said that science had to take a backseat to exciting cinema. I can’t disagree with that 100%, but I can say that that particular logic may have gone to somewhat of an extreme in this instance. That’s one of a number of Bay tropes that crop up in this film. The rest read like a modern day cinema related version of the Book of Revelation.
Bay trope number one is the throwing out of logic in order to tell an exciting story. Bay trope number two, and one that he’s probably best known for, is using explosions as a working language. There are explosions everywhere in this movie. Bay weaves together strings of explosions like sailors weave together strings of profanities. Even when there doesn’t appear to be anything explosive on screen, something explodes. That’s less the case with this film as again, Bruckheimer was involved, but anywhere that Bay could rationally include an explosion, one got thrown in there. In this particular instance, they do add to the excitement of the film so we’ll give a pass, but we all know just how out of control this is going to get later…
Bay trope number three is the use of unnecessary, and offensive racial stereotypes. We live in the year 2016. The world is intimately familiar with the terror blight that is Michael Bay. It’s only been a few years ago that we were slinging mud at him for those super racist robots in Revenge of the Fallen. However, it starts right here in Armageddon. This is ground zero. There are two characters during a bit in New York City who serve no purpose whatsoever, except to presumably die in a meteor shower. One is a loud mouthed, entitled, and terribly annoying man who is more concerned with his dog than with the other human beings around him, and the other is a cantankerous taxi driver. Neither one of these characters gets a name. They’re just there for comedy purposes. However, both are black. Now you might be saying, what does race have to do with anything? I’m not making an attempt at racism here. What I’m saying is these two stereotypes could have been any race and worked fine so why did they have to be black? Why did they have to be in the movie at all? They’re annoying, they serve no purpose to the plot, and they might be kind of insulting to some folks. They were included for cheap laughs, and we all played a part in legitimizing their existence. While we’re on that particular scene, there’s also a really blatant nod to the 1998 Godzilla movie included here so yeah, that happened.
Bay trope number four is probably the one he is second most known for, and that is the awkward use of female skin. There are a number of scenes where Bay apparently attempts to push the envelope of how much skin he can get away with showing before the MPAA slaps an R rating on the movie. Poor Liv Tyler has to pretend to enjoy herself while Ben Affleck plays with animal crackers on her practically naked body. I don’t even want to know how many fetishes that created. The scene could almost be considered sweet if it weren’t so darn creepy. I enjoy shaking up foreplay as much as the next, but A) the world is about to end, and B) they’re in a field somewhere where poor innocent kids might accidently scar themselves for life. Also, the dialog is really awkward throughout the whole scene. It just doesn’t do anything for the film that something totally different might have done just as well.
Michael Bay trope number four is the use of static characters. This one is offset, again probably by Bruckheimer, but it still abounds. There are some really useless characters in this movie. Oven Wilson was in this movie. I bet you didn’t know that. He’s in the movie for about an hour and a half just so he can play the brunt of a joke about puberty, then he dies before the third act starts. Steve Buscemi is also in this movie. According to him, he signed on to play a noble and brave geologist. However, when he got cast in the role, the character was changed to a sleazy, lecherous creep. I could imagine being offended by the changes and had I been in Buscemi’s situation, I might have left the project. Most of the rest of the cast are relegated to your standard macho devil-may-care archetypes. They all have tiny little quirks so that the audience doesn’t mix them up, but none are developed too far beyond their starting point.
Bay trope number five is one that no one can really fault poor Micael over. He loves Murica, and he’s not afraid to show it in his films. I’ll admit that I haven’t seen all of his movies, but the ones that I have seen go out of their way to vomit patriotism from every frame. I’m definitely not saying that’s a bad thing. I’m only pointing out that it basically started with this movie. There are patriotic symbols everywhere. Be they flags, monuments, patches, or military paraphernalia, Bay takes every opportunity to slip them in. It’s his only signature that I can’t hold against him. Dude loves him some Murica. Whatever.
There’s one more thing that I want to point out that is not specific to Michael Bay, but that you see a TON in the visual mediums, and you may not have even noticed it before. It’s been a trend since digital film started becoming a thing, and I’m sure once I say it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s the contrast between orange and blue. About 20 years ago, someone decided that they wanted to be able to process digital footage quickly and easily and without losing their job. So they boiled each frame down to its lowest common denominator, or the things that we see most while watching movies. That as it turns out, is the actors, who are generally human. Human skin tones tend to fall within that orange spectrum. Blue is the complement to orange and if you took any art classes in school, you’ll know that complementary colors produce the most drastic contrast. So orange skin, blue everything else means that the picture on screen will pop out more to the viewer. Thus a trend was born. It’s a super lazy trend and if you’re involved in film, just stop.I bring this up because I paid particular attention to this throughout my viewing of Armageddon and it’s in nearly every frame. You can’t escape it. Even when it seems that you have, just wait a few more frames because the missing element is going to show up in just a few seconds. It definitely speaks to Bay’s lack of experience at this point in his career.
Now that we’ve railed on Bay a bit, let me get to a few good points before we tie things up. First, most of the performances in this movie were delightful to watch. The characters may not have been very deep, but you could tell that they were at least fun for the actors to play. It was especially refreshing to see Ben Affleck in a film he made before he sidled himself to Jennifer Gardner. She was a disastrous bomb to his career, but here we get to see him in his prime. Bruce Willis delivers a good performance despite misgivings on set. Even Steve Buscemi delivers a sterling performance in the role that he’ll play until he dies. Michael Clarke Duncan manages to give us a small preview of his character in The Green Mile, which is one of his best roles in my opinion. I also really liked Billy Bob Thornton’s performance. He gets to be snarky and authoritative, and you can tell he had a good time.
There are good character moments, and to be absolutely fair, these moments even do a little to further some small character development in some cases. Some may slow the pace of the film a little, but it could almost be argued that that’s not a bad thing. Also, by the end of the movie, much to my own surprise, I actually found that I had created a tenuous connection with some of the characters and that those connections actually elicited an emotional response. It was totally unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome. It speaks to the fact that from a general perspective, the film is actually pretty solid. Bay hadn’t gone completely insane yet, and the work benefited from that sanity. I’ll tie my last point to this one because I think they’re actually related. Trevor Rabin wrote an incredible score for this movie. It’s the score more than any other element that really got me emotionally invested in what was happening on screen. In fact, the licensed music also helped the film greatly. All of the music chosen for the scenes they were used in punctuate the scene well and add to experience in a positive way. It’s the music element that really bolsters up the rest of the film where it lacks.
Like Michael Bay, I think I’ve gotten more out of this article that I deserve, but thanks for sticking it out. Is this movie great? Not a chance, but nor is it terrible. It’s pretty competently done, and for all of its faults, it’s still an entertaining watch. It definitely earns its nostalgic fondness, and it’s one that I would suggest keeping alive in our collective consciousness simply for the fun that can be had while watching it, and also as a case study of one man’s descent into madness. Stick around for next week as we look at some mind bending, physics breaking films that defined a generation!
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